


Aftermath

by thepoette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood, Bromance, Castiel in the Bunker, Dark, Fallen Angels, Family, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Shock, Stitches, Suicidal Castiel, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepoette/pseuds/thepoette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 8x23 fic started before Season 9.  In the aftermath of fallen angels, Castiel walks to the bunker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I...walked here

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for suicidal ideation and the aftermath of attempt.

"Where do we go from here?" Kevin is the first to ask. His words rupture the quiet with all the grace of shattered glass.

Sam jumps. He sits half-coherent and listless slumped against the table (because he fought his brother to the bare bones for his chair at the bunker while they consider the next step). His recovery is agonized faces and stiff movements. To Dean it doesn’t look like recovery.

Dean doesn’t answer. Can’t. It’s the day after Heaven fell, and all they have to show for it, are the dents on the Impala after Dean maneuvered her out of the way of falling angels. Dean has the percussive sound of them crashing to the ground recorded into his brain.

Depending on where they land, some don’t get up. And Dean’s single minded rush of getting Sam to safety, doesn’t let him look back.

Instead, he keeps his eye on Sam, like a focal point in the horizon; the only compass he can find in this entire situation. Heaven burns in his mind’s eye, and what keeps him from going crazy is Sam.

Sam jumps in his seat and winces, and that’s the only thing that draws Dean away enough from tunnel vision to notice the knocking.

"Is…is someone at the door?" Sam has enough disbelief in his voice to liven it from pained apathy.

Dean ejects from his seat. His gun is in hand before he hits the staircase, fingering the trigger as he unlocks the door.

The inset entryway of the bunker doesn’t allow sunlight, or direct wind. The weather beyond the small flight of stairs is a dead thing. It smells like ashes and lightning, even hours after. Dean’s eyes burn against it, but what makes him recoil the most is the figure at the threshold.

"Cas," he doesn’t know how it emerges, with gratitude or accusation, only that it burns his tongue on the way out. The air between them might combust, but Dean’s ability to discern is off by seconds. He sees his free hand shooting out and fisting a lapel. He drags Cas in unresisting and shuts the door.

No reaction. Cas’ expressions are non-pulsed and non expectant as he occupies the landing. He doesn’t raise his dark head or look in his direction, but Dean stares hard enough for the both of them before the noises from the floor below stirs him.

"Is that Cas?" Sam’s threadbare voice is still capable of warmth when he worries. He’s already shrugging off the blanket Dean practically had to staple to his shoulders.

Dean doesn’t begin to answer. He moves towards Sam’s gravity, and heads downstairs. He must be magnetized, because Cas matches him step for step until they hit the main floor. Dean snatches his hand back once they hit the last stair, realizing he hasn’t let go of the coat.

There’s silence, needling and pervasive as they stand in a square and take inventory on their places in the new world order where Heaven is displaced. Dean stares down. Sam’s inquiries wait patiently in the dark circled hazel of his eyes. Kevin hovers in their intense proximity, tilting back and forth on his feet like a meter spiking on the building discomfort.

Cas doesn’t register. And Dean is sick to death of silence.

"What happened?" his voice is gunshot in the dark, echoing and startling. He takes them all unawares, but he isn’t done shooting off rounds. "Hey, Earth to Cas!" He smacks the shoulder of the trenchcoat, ignoring Kevin’s flinching, and Sam’s rejoinders that sound like his name.

Cas jerks, but only on impact. No movements stammer from him, no excuses. He stares mid-range, eyes cobalt blue in the dim of false underground lighting.

"Dean," Sam’s voice warns, but his arm stops Dean’s hand from landing grievances a second time. Again, it’s Sam who makes him aware beyond his constant state of being pissed off. "I think he’s in shock."

Dean looks again at the thing standing in their midst, he stares and doesn’t miss this time.

In his mud-cacked coat, Cas is a facsimile of himself. There are stark differences, and Dean is well-versed enough to notice the way his hands are shaking in his sleeves. His face is bloodless, his mouth washed out and dry. But his eyes are the worst, set into his face with all the movement and catastrophe of a breaking statue. He’s far away, and raw. His mouth is open, cracked, and trembling. His skin is lined with sweat.

Dean touches the side of his cheek and draws back with a shout. ”Shit! He’s freezing…”

Sam’s already draping the blanket over Cas shoulders.

"Cas?" Dean shakes him, tries to breach into that worn-away look.

"Try to get him to sit," Sam pulls out a chair, even as his own legs want to give beneath him. Dean nods.

"Come on, Cas…come on, man," Dean finds it disturbingly easy to ply Cas into the seat, bending his joints and shifting him down. Dean kneels, seeking eye-level, and creates friction as he rubs into the blanket with his hands.

"Did you fall…?" Dean pauses a moment to gauge for reaction, if anything comes out no matter how minuscule a sign.

Sam looks up in horror from where he’s rubbing warmth into Cas’ hands beside Dean. His hands stop, pausing above a blanketed lap. And suddenly his thoughts are mirrored in his eyes, all careful and considering. 

Dean follows completely as he begins to search for injuries. He peeks critically under the blanket, but there’s no blood, just the dirt and the grime of outside. And to Dean’s amounting grief, he notices the thin layer of ash Cas is dusted with, every fine hair on his face catching, even to his lashes, his sweat filmy against Dean’s fingers.

"Here," Kevin swims in from obscurity with a warm mug in his hand. Kevin Tran advanced placement, apparently in all things.

Dean blows it down a few breaths, rests it under the upper lip of Cas’ mouth. The shakes don’t subside, and Dean slips his hand beneath the blanket until he braces the back of his head. He steadies them both and leans the mug. The liquid steals through that open cracked mouth, but spills off its frozen corners. 

As the water dribbles down his neck and follows the outline of his throat, Cas doesn’t stare at him. He keeps his eyes straight into the ether of his mind where Dean can picture the meteoric showers of dying grace falling.

Cas’ draws his head back unconsciously, Dean can feel the muscle of his neck chording into his hand. His first reactive movements are aborted as Dean pulls the mug away from his lips.

"Shit," Dean mutters at the mess, lets go enough to wipe his hand down along Cas’ sweaty neckline.

At the touch, Cas’ hands clench but don’t curl entirely into fists. The shaking only grows worse as they hover above the blanket along his knees. His face contorts, eyebrows cutting a line along his brow as they draw together in the first outward sign of discomfort. His teeth clack together, rattling in his head as his mouth jerks. His lips start to blue.

"Dean," Sam’s alerts him.

"Breathe, Cas!" Dean slaps the mug on the table, letting its slide go unnoticed as he stands, grabs at blanketed shoulders and shakes, "Breath dammit…You gotta breathe…"

"Come on, Cas," Sam grips onto his wrists feeling resistance as he tries to subside the agitated movements of his arms, "Stay with us, man."

"Look at me, Cas!" Dean barks as he cups his hand against a stubbled right cheek. With his other hand, he gives light slaps. "Come on, look at me…"

A harder slap goes off in Dean’s desperation. It leaves a burn in his hand, but results in Cas’ eyes fluttering in his direction.

"That’s it."

A gust of air punches through those cracked worn lips as Cas delivers a breath. It’s like he’s been held underwater, at the brink of losing himself entirely. The blue of his eyes drift in incomprehension for seconds at a time, but slowly he returns to them, slipping back into the body still shaking under their hands.

Dean doesn’t let go, his thumb circles at the apex of a cheekbone. He’s fishing for that stare, and is soon rewarded as Cas’ gaze hits home.

"There you are you sonovabitch," it might be laughter, rising from his mouth with a thread of hysteria. Dean rubs the corner of his eyes against his shoulder to relieve the sting they bear, but he doesn’t lose sight of Cas, not once.

"D-Dea…" Cas’ teeth clatter mercilessly as he tries to move his mouth around the name. His breathing stutters, his head weak and lolling as Dean supports his face.

"Put his head between his knees," Kevin suggests in quiet acknowledgment as he wraps his arms around himself from feet away.

They do just that. Sam and Dean support the drag and jerk of their friend’s body, sharing the weight unfairly between them. Dean takes the brunt of it as they manage to get Cas’ back hunched, and keep him from tipping off center.

Sam braces his spine and shoulder, spreading his fingers as if he can keep the warmth in. Dean returns to kneeling. They exchange dumbfounded expressions above Cas’ convulsive frame.

"I think it’s hypothermia," Kevin drifts closer. He’s slightly more detached from the conundrum that is Cas than either brother. "My guess is exposure."

"Hypothermia?" Sam riddles it out in his head, finds the taste of the word bad and unreasonable, "Cas gets hypothermia now?"

"We found him by the side of the road with a gut shot…I’m thinking that’s not totally out of the picture," Dean rolls his eyes. Like either of them hasn’t seen the way Cas has carried himself these past years. And after Purgatory, no one in the bunker can call themselves Superman.

There’s a faint sound rising from the cavern of Cas’ drawn up shoulders.

"I…w-walked…" it’s a deep whisper, embedded so far inside his friend’s body, Dean can barely dig it out.

"You walked?" Sam’s trying so hard to follow, so he crouches beside his brother, keeping his hands on his friends arm as they continue to shake uselessly.

"Cas…did you fall?" Dean tries to make the question steady, direct. It breaks in the tunnel of his throat, so the result is weak at best, stupid at worst.

"I-I…walked…"

Cas stares at the peeking toes of Jimmy Novak’s dress shoes. Dean follows the line of his gaze, and lifts a corner of the blanket. The shoes are scuffed, and unraveling. His soles are filed down by what must be hours work on foot.

Dean’s hand slides along the rough curve of Cas’ jaw and throat. He feels the thunder of his pulse along the vein there. He notices the tight fists his friend has made even as he’s slumped over his knees. Small red beads of liquid land on the flooring of the bunker of the Men of Letters. And Cas’ squeezes his fingers tighter into his palm.

Dean’s heart is compressed and hard shelled. He swallows down passing gravel. He looks at Cas, really looks and see something hollowed out from its center. He pries a hand open with gentle fingers, and sees the deep welts left over by fingernails. He sees palms covered in blood that won’t get zapped clean, or heal without time.

"Cas…" Dean knows what question he means to attach to that name, but doesn’t have the courage to ask.

"They fell…" Cas says emptily, "I…walked here."


	2. They fell

"He said he walked here, Dean. It’s been twenty four hours since the angels fell, and he said he walked here—"

"He’s still shaking—just support him, Sam…”

Their combined voices ghost over his senses. And when they touch, their fingers might pass through him.

Phantom feelings and thoughts take him by half-posession. He exists in backward time, unborn, but coming to life unsteadily. 

Life.

He’d been walking dead for so long since the black sky sank its comet tears to the ground. Rationally, he knows he’s been human since then, but here now, with them, these brothers of variation, he takes his first fragile breaths and finds he can’t stop.

"Cas," Dean’s eyes are green, but against the lamps overhead they hood over darkly under pinched brows and spurt color, like coal run through with the veins of embers. Contradiction, thy name is…

"Stop that, man," Dean shrugs his shoulder for him, clenching fingers deep and anchoring, shaking him from the stupor that blankets him. "Just take it slow, ok?"

Dean…I don’t understand. 

He wants to, so very much. But sitting between their walls of whispered diagnosis and support, he can’t. Not half-alive.

Am I going too fast?

Reality seeps through his pores, the way pollen sticks to the atmosphere as it awaits the action of bees and the mercy of temperate weather. He breathes to catch up.

"Guys he’s hyperventilating…" Kevin murmurs from the galaxy next door to the Winchesters.

It’s Deans fingers, points of rough friction joined by a sweat slicked palm, that dam up Cas’ slipshod awareness. His eyes are the right color now, dragging him back to them. To the present.

Sam’s there in the present, coloring the world with expressions of ragged compassion. Spread thin as he is, he squeezes every drop of human warmth he’s capable of, extends it to Cas.

Cas remembers the fissures grated along the light of his soul. He can almost see them beyond the kind membrane of Sam’s body, all negative space and open. Cracks in the universe where nothing murmurs or radiates.

His vision is filled with these breaks of light. 

"They fell," he tells them obsoletely.

The building that surrounds them turns into an incomplete puzzle, so are the faces that start to swim before him.

"—ean…losing…him" Sam’s hazing out.

Their fingers dabble along his throat, kinder than knives.

I’m taking from you now, your essence…your grace. It’s the last piece.

Is he breathing too fast? Or has he stopped altogether?

Breaks in reasoning, he swims in time, submerging by seconds and emerging minutes forward. He’s surrounded by sounds, things that tap out frequencies that are diluted and short. He stands…no he’s being leaned up into a spray of water.

He seeks out Sam and Dean, fingers white and half-mast. He sees white water-lapped skin spread before him like a sheet. His cheek is pressed into the round of his bare shoulder, his neck weightless and insubstantial.

"Gotcha, Cas…" 

Sam does. From this skewed angle, he hangs from underarm, draped lifeless across Sam’s clothed shoulders. With ankles turned in under him, the water slants and drags across them both.

He’s naked, watching as Deans palms at the gray matter of his skin, the muddy mix of the remains of his family, and all his hopes of ever fixing anything.

No…save it…save…

He watches it drain to the hole in the tiled floor. He stares into the black longingly and then submits.

He walks under unloving night, bearing witness. The first to Fall, will see the last light go out and witness Heaven’s purge. 

What have I done…he asks no one.

He walks with fire in eyes, and nothing in his mind. He walks, head tilted up following the paths of the falling and the dying. One crash resounds from yards into the forested dark. He runs, slipping at the edges of broken trees. He runs and finds Inias slumped in his tattered suit, eyes wide, neck broken.

He closes his eyes, and resolutely follows the next burst of light and fading fire. He runs after the next one. Seraphiel. And the next one after. Arariel rests on flower beds already prepared for him. Raziel. Harut. All dead. He isn’t fast enough to…

…to what? Catch them?

Like falling fireflies. Urged in the stupid, pointless, human way with panic driving whip marks into his legs and flank, he follows the tails of dying stars, fed on that human seed of hope; following this impulse down into its grave with every brother and sister that turns up dead.

Into the hundreds, he gives up.

He turns away instead, following the unconscious tether pulling him to the road beyond the trees. He walks it numb, passing by Iofiel, who was known to accompany Metatron, lying like roadkill.

He walks it until the last light breaks away from the wide black of the universe and plunges into decimation, until the ashes of their wings rain down collectively.

He’s so past the point of horror, so past unfathomable grief, he hides in the body left to him, uses it like a vehicle and drives his feet forward. Step by step he walks, dismissing the few bodies that wash in and out of his path on the road, until a new obscure light greets him.

Gray dawn, building bleakly in the distance. It doesn’t warm the hole he’s plunged in. He walks with that tether incessantly stringing him along. He doesn’t stop until his shoes hit stairs and a metal door.

And then…he wakes up.

The shock of his brain’s transition has his mouth working on a scream. There is no release of the swell of its weight locked into his throat, cresting over an invisible wound where his grace was torn from. 

He gags on the remembered knife of it. Frees spittle like acid from the corners of his lungs, but no sounds touch his lips. 

"Hey—hey! You’re alright…" Sam doesn’t have the strength behind his hands, but he’s there and louder than the silent screaming trapped within.

And then, it’s Dean, rising from his other side joining his brother’s failing efforts to restrain him.

"It’s just a dream," Dean tells him, pinioning him into the bed he now realizes rests beneath him.

His words stir a reaction in Cas like an order being carried out, his mind gathers itself around it bringing about his full consciousness and reasoning.

It’s his first dream. Newly human, his mind unconsciously recording and storing new data since only the night before, it makes sense his first dream would be a memory.

"That’s it, breathe," Sam encourages as he resumes his seat in the chair scooted closer to the left side of the bed. 

"You were dreaming, man," Dean mirrors on his right. He loosens his hold on Cas’ shoulder but doesn’t release. "Wasn’t real," Dean urges him.

As much as Cas desires to obey, he can’t.

"It was." He tells them.


	3. Vigil

They sit vigil, situated at Cas’ sides. They must look like sentries, either protecting him or guarding.

Even they don’t know the roles, anymore.

All that Sam knows, is the age he’s amassed in the few hours since Cas came back to them. All he knows is the invisible grit of denied sleep filming onto the sclera of his eyes. All he knows is that his clothes are still soggy and wet from the impromptu shower. He shivers from the withdrawal of the aborted trials, like he shivered away from the loss of demon blood in his system all those years ago.

Can he go through it a second time?

Screaming in Bobby’s panic room while his body tossed him against the walls…What will it be like this time? Recovering from God’s trials? Hell, they’ve found a dungeon in the bunker. They just might find out.

Cas shivers in response, under his palm. Sam forgets when and how it came to be clamped around Cas’ wrist. It hardly matters now, with Dean leaning off in his chair, doing the same thing.

Conscious now, temperature now adequate under the blankets they’ve buried him in, Cas lies supine with his arms arranged outside the covers. His eyes flicker towards them uneasily. It’s the only movement he has made aside from the shivering. Sam thinks of something adjusting, recalibrating a new instrument…or machine. It’s a man, capillaries and bones, but to Cas it might mean the same.

Sam fears. The future looks at once as daunting as it did when the night spat out its angels. He can’t look at this new puzzle without a wince of strain. But then, looking at Dean feels much the same way, and Sam is big enough to extend his concerns to Cas.

Family.

It jumps up to weary attention, even now as he gazes at the new thing Cas has become. He’s part of their species now. So Sam hopes this is reason enough to get the damn idiot to finally understand that he doesn’t have an excuse anymore…or a choice to leave.

Subtly, Sam’s eyes drift over the blanketed valleys of Cas’ form and regards his brother. The way Dean is staring, like he wants to rip Cas’ head off or hug the crap out of him, Sam thinks they’re both not going to let him off easy.

"You were dreaming, man," Dean insists, prescribing with all severity. He jots it down in the world as Cas’ first rule of humanity. "Wasn’t real."

Cas has broken universes. His gaze is an internal wall where all his crimes replay. Sam can see them inflamed behind the irises of his eyes wounding him over and over. He has known rebellion as an angel, in a greater scale of damage than, Sam shudders to think, even Lucifer’s rebellion wrought.

Cas turns to Dean, and thinks nothing of breaking the laws of man.

"It was." Cas tells them. His body ripples under the blankets, hips lining, knee joints straightening. It’s the default of a soldier, even as he lies between them shaking despair and stripped of rank. His hands, however are his biggest tell, with fingers gripping the fabric of bedsheets like they’re made of cast out lifelines. He fights for handholds, afraid of falling.

Of course, Sam thinks, it’s too late for that.

Heaven has burned defeated in flags of shattered fire. It has consigned its fallen soldiers to death or humanity, and this silence is the aftermath.

Cas looks like he wants to tear the quiet to pieces. An angel might’ve done so, made of wavelengths and frequencies hooked into the code of the universe, able to undo its fabric and reform it to his own designs. 

He sits up abruptly, jackknifed on nothing but the tension he has armored himself with. He doesn’t speak, just gathers the collective corner of the blankets and shrugs them and the brothers hands off him.

“Cas…”

"Cas, don’t…”

He’s not listening to the warnings Sam and Dean falter after him as he swings his legs and settles his bandaged feet on the carpeted floor on Sam’s side of the bed.

There are holes in Jimmy Novak’s tattered dress shoes that hid the blisters and cuts on his feet before they chucked off all Cas’ ash covered outer wears.

Sam remembers throwing pained expressions over his naked body, his pendulum weight swinging dead between them as they shifted him to the shower room to raise his body temperature. He remembers Dean clenching his jaw as he rubbed friction into white-marbled skin, and when they were done, Dean had stitched the soles of Cas’ feet and settled him down in his room.

Cas had walked himself past exhaustion. He’d walked bloody. It must’ve hurt. The lines etched on Cas’ face reveal how it hurts now, resting his wrapped feet on soft carpet. On the road, he must’ve ignored it for miles; just ran his newly human body ragged, not knowing about pain and its various thresholds. How the limitations were put there for survival, and how he needs to listen to his body if he wants to live in it. 

Sam thinks how he’s never had to before.

Sam watches Cas’ eyes fight closure as he leans heavily over his knees dressed only in black sweatpants and the warmest flannel shirt they had on hand. Several sizes too big, it slides open, buttons made loose while he slept. His chest is bare save for light bruises and scratches from the day they can’t account for before he slipped back into their lives.

Strong-arming his exhaustion, he plants his feet stubbornly and makes his ascent. Knees giving up ground soon afterward, Cas catches the edge of the bed determinedly, and gives a ragged breath as he pushes himself up and away to the door.

Sam’s slow to follow him. His body has rooted to the chair, or he’s grown too weary to bear it around anymore. Peripherally, he can hear Dean’s chair give a mute crash to the carpet floor as he reaches Sam’s side of the bed, the side with the exit.

"You ok?"

Trust Dean to only pause for Sam’s breath, and never his own.

"I’m fine," Sam manages upright with limited tilt of gravity. "Just go after him."

It won’t be hard.

Cas’ limp is bad as Dean catches him in the main room. Over marble flooring he takes magnet steps that stick to the floor. He walks with the gravity of a denser planet around his shoulders. Something in his face fractures apart and splits off soundless across the map table, with every quiet shift of foot.

There’s blood on the floor. Cas leaves ellipses of agonies unsaid trailing behind him. The sutures, Dean himself stuck in, have popped.

They don’t register.

Dean can imagine his solitary figure on the road, pushing for miles beyond pain and reason because he didn’t know to stop for them. Always too removed. He can stop now. 

He has to stop. 

"Where the hell do you think you’re going?" Dean’s hands clamp tightly and band around Cas’ upper arm as he fishes him back a step. Cas staggers and winces, but nothing more.

They’ve walked themselves to the corner of the table. Cas recovers his balance against it, and refuses to sit or let himself lean completely on Dean. Instead, Cas divides his weight on shaky arms over the table’s wide face and drives his fists down doggedly to support it. 

Because Cas’ feet won’t let him standoff, Dean imagines this will have to do.

"Leaving…again," Dean lets his arm go for spite, watches as Cas struggles with bearing his own weight in earnest.

"Coming here was a mistake," Cas’ voice cracks through his built up apathy. Dean can hear guilt and pain slip through the fissures, even as Cas tries to shore himself up.

"No. Leaving in the first place, that was a mistake,” Dean knows guilt, how to drive it inwards, and how to weaponize it. Cas, half-way to falling on his ass in borrowed clothes, is a fish in a barrel. 

"Going on your little holy mission half-cocked, that was a mistake. Trusting the angel you’ve known for five freaking minutes over us. That was a big fucking mistake. Cas…” Dean lets his hands run over his face, lets them burn off agitated motions that reflexively want to punch at the obstacles before them. Namely, Cas.

“Don’t you remember the shit-storm of the past three years?” The memories spark like exposed wiring still running hot and unresolved. They burn everything in Dean down, even now; leaving him to the bare bones where the hurt has been waiting for its say. His mouth opens and there it decides to finish the circuit.

“I’ve been sitting here like an asshole waiting and praying and…hoping. I told you, Cas—I’ve been telling you. I needed you…I needed you to let me know what was going on. I needed you to not go running off on some tablet kick and I needed you to trust me…”

Cas doesn’t look up at him, shoulders hunched around his ears as he drives his hands further beneath him. Dean can see his words sink into the dark of his mind, how they bow his head and load it down. But he’s no supplicant. He seethes with inaction, a chemical combustion waiting for the right trigger. 

"What are you—are you trying to zap outta here?!” Dean can recognize it; the nameless thing he’s trying to wrap around himself before he usually fades out. Instinct has Dean punching his arm out to stop him, but there’s no need. It falls dead around them. 

Cas gasps and it has the audacity to sound like surprise. As if now, now he can understand his predicament. He slants, from hip to shoulder, as if the veil has lifted, and with it goes all pretense of the soldier. Eyes wide and horrified, he’s caught in the dark alongside Dean.

"You can’t do that anymore, Cas," it’s bitter enough for Dean to spit it out, even at Cas who’s gaping like a wound. Dean’s not above kicking a man now that they’re finally on even ground. “Guess you gotta stick around for once and deal with your crap right here, right now instead of turning tail and running like you always do.”

Dean should tread carefully. He has a chance to get through that broken facade Cas is trying so desperately to slot back in place. But the naked blue of his eyes peel it back, and his mouth trembles violently with every upsurge of human breath. He’s going to choke on denial, because he doesn’t know of any other way to be.

And Dean wants to show him differently. He has it in his head to take that first step. But he’s swallowed whole by epic let-downs, and all he can find for it is anger.

"Well you know what, I’ll leave the door open for you—won’t be one of your best exits, but don’t worry about that, Cas—"

Dean’s the one to turn his back first.

"—You’ve already shown me how good you are at leaving."

Even in the half-dark of the main room, with the smaller lights flickering in the console to guide him, Dean finds his route. And if he hears the sound of something going to its knees solidly behind him empty of fight, there’s too much of a chasm to make his way back now.


	4. Breaking mirror

“—You’ve already shown me how good you are at leaving.”

Sam knows when to brave a storm. He’s come to know the signs; how it boils on the footsteps of some epic disaster. He knows when it can’t be avoided. The epicenter is raining hell overhead, and sometimes Sam lets it electrify his presence, lets it use up all its senseless fury, and pass over.

Dean is thunder, staring hot and seething at anything in his path. He clips against his brother, unconsciously. Sam has to throw an arm out to the wall to keep himself from being taken by fury, but takes no offense himself.

He waits along the sidelines, half-patient, half-turmoil, because he knows he isn’t the focus of his brother’s contempt. Sometimes it isn’t about braving the storm, so much as witnessing it.

The half-turmoil he feels is for Cas. He makes a broken structure just catapulted off its last legs. He sits on his ankles, spine curved, holding his upper body by teetering arms. The storm has passed, and already so close to complete collapse, he hasn’t braved it well.

Sam tries to puff himself on strength he doesn’t have left to spare. So far, he’s the one better off and that’s what spurs him from the shelter of the hallway and into the main room.

Sam clears his throat, courage failing as he follows the bloody foot path along the marble, treading in glossy smears. His friend is encased in a shell of silent despair, and Sam’s self-conscious of breaking it.

“Cas…”Sam tries for a velvet tone, a soft caress rather than a prod.

He decides not to hover. He takes all of his protesting joints and reminds them how to bend and fold as he makes his way to the ground beside Cas.

In all the shifts and groans, Cas doesn’t stir to life or acknowledge. Sam’s not even sure if he realizes who’s with him, kneeling before sunrise hours.

“Cas…hey man,” Sam finds his place ill-fitting as he reaches over to pet awkwardly at a shoulder. Profound bonds notwithstanding, what can he say in the wake of what Dean has left behind? He thinks of quips to buffer the strain building under his touch. What would Dean say? He’s ten again, trying to sound like big brother, trying to be friends with Dean’s friends.

He throws that idea away before it can sour his intentions here. He gives himself more credit where he stands with Cas because what else can he do for the guy who fixed his head by breaking his own.

“Come on,” Sam isn’t above pleading, or bending his face down to capture those wide eyes staring at the nothing space between his hands.

Cas does a full body shudder against him, muscles bunching and ready to atomize and fly apart. Sam makes his grip more firm, throws his other arm around like a net over his shoulders to catch him.

In lame terms, it’s a hug. But filed under Winchester, reserved for the aftermath of every battleground that should’ve killed them…and for family, it means, I’ve got you…We made it.

Cas, observant in all things Sam and Dean, seems to recognize the gesture. His face startles, eyes rippling in disrupted self-destruction. Sam can see the pools of blame and guilt writhing in the cerulean of his eyes. Sam has ended the world on his own to be familiar with the look.

Still, Cas’ stare cuts into the quick of Sam’s offer of comfort and brotherhood; carves it out and makes it an empty attempt.

Sam lets his arm fall uselessly, adjusts his balance. He knows when to step back from the storm, even if it’s intensity isn’t one he’s used to. This is the storm of a thousand falling stars, a type of ruin Sam can’t fit into the scope of his mind with any pragmatism.

Falling short of an anchor, Cas starts to sway in place. Sam is quick to slot under him, tucking his shoulder into an armpit and wrapping himself around his trembling ribcage.

He hasn’t cried. In all the time that he’s trudged through like a wounded soldier shell-shocked from war, Cas hasn’t spilled a drop of misery other than blood. Sam suspects he probably hasn’t decompressed since waking up who-knows-where.

Probably explains why he’s slow to snap out of it.

Even now, staring with the half-moon color of his irises blinking at Sam with foreign light, he barely filters through. There’s nothing concentrated in the color of his skin, or the way he occupies it; nothing concrete but the grief.

Sam wishes Dean can get his head out of his ass long enough to see it. He doesn’t know quite what to do with it, and calling his big brother out for help might make it worse, so Sam forgets how much he wants to slink away from that gaze (that somehow still goes through him and makes him turn away first) and sleep decades off.

“Ok, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Sam whispers for just the two of them, complementing the hush of the room, “we’re gonna get you fixed up, and maybe then we can catch a few hours of sleep before sunrise.” He locks his legs under him, adjusts his hold on Cas, “But first we’re gonna stand up.”

He wastes a minute trying to figure out the mechanics of bridal-carrying, but Cas steps up, bent on doing just what Sam has practically instructed. Sam doesn’t think much of his personal strength right now, only that Cas is on autopilot right now.

Instead of getting in the way of his friend’s shaky balance, Sam follows closely, acting as a human crutch as they lean together along the hallway. He frowns at the blood browning the floor, and when they hit carpet he winces for Cas who keeps his focus forward even as his knees knock against Sam’s.

By the end of it, Sam doesn’t know who’s supporting who. Cas sinks into the edge of the bed, and sits there like a headstone, ancient and cracked at its center. Sam keeps himself from toppling over by leaning on the headboard, and because they’ve left the needle and thread in their medical room, he doesn’t let himself collapse the way Cas does.

“Hang tight, man…” Sam jostles Cas’ shoulder a bit for acknowledgement.

He’s pulling away, heading to retrieve supplies, when a hand encircles his wrist with a fierce grip.

“…Sam…” At the end of that tether, a face stares up at him with epitaphs that say things like What have I done…Why do you continue to help me. They talk of what’s deserved, of what’s left. Sam is in a rush to get out from under, but there it is. And there he is, shifted under a monument of worry.

Sam braces back, instead.

“Just give it time, Cas…” Sam purges the ache of silence, hoping that his words can replicate sutures, that they’ll mend rifts and fall away soon enough.

Staring at his friend, is his second wind. Sam exits for the door, leaving Cas behind him like a sad mile marker. He makes his way through the hallway with a new trial on hand, determined to make it stick.

And when Sam leaves, with him go all acts of Life. All the breathing vibrancy of something willing and striving, he takes all of that harrowed confusion and color with him. The meager light available from the lamp on the stand next to the bed seems dimmer somehow.

It’s strange to perceive in this crippled way, all the extremities of the universe compacted or broken off altogether. Cas experiences the thought that Sam and Dean know of nothing else.

Cas knows better, and mourns for it.

Movement strikes the corner of his vision, like a bird hitting a closed window. His attention goes to the left where the wooden bureau sits complacent against the wall. There’s a wooden frame mounted on top, or more accurately, the image captured within its structure has his attention.

There’s a man. He has a face that trades expressions with the damned. Cas has seen the parts of Hell where souls agonize and swim in crowds with faces like this. He doesn’t recognize him; unremarkable as he is with two eyes, a nose, a downturned mouth. But the look he casts is eviscerated, and human in the most primal way.

He stares at Cas, deeply, forlornly. Blame reaches and pries at the heart of what Cas is missing. When those blue eyes fracture and move on guilt, he staggers and Cas staggers in his place.

“…no…” the sound escapes from the cage of his breast where a human heart is contained. The man moves his lips in the shape of that sound, and Cas knows.

Cas rises and yet is leeched of purpose at the same time. He has moved both closer and away from himself. The man now leans against the top of the bureau gazing horror his way.

They touch, and the mirror slants between them like a wall of truth. His fingers pass over the reflection of a cheek, the mock curve of a trembling mouth; expecting the warmth of blood flow, the pliancy of flesh. It’s foolish to seek them there, so Cas collects the shards of both reason and the application thereof, and tries instead for what has come to be his own face.

His fingers shudder into the skin below what he now finds are his eyes. His brain fries out on the thought. He looks down unable search for his true shape and figure, among meat and sinew. Somehow it’s easier to think on Jimmy Novak.

Cas can picture the man, every dip and rise of particle that housed his soul, the complicated muscle of his lips, the careful edge of his collar, the ephemeral light that spilled from the blue flame of his gaze. When Cas is moved by courage enough to lift his head, he can’t find the man anywhere. Another, stands in his place.

And even then, Cas can’t seem to find himself there either.

There are striations and patterns mutilated, and strands of thoughts hacked of meaning. There are no obvious differences, but the knowledge that they’re missing…that he’s missing, is still there, burning in his human concious like a poorly cauterized wound.

Knowledge. It burns like acid through the liquid vessels of his brain. This can’t be all it contains, this fragile casing. This can’t be all he is.

This can’t be what he’s subjected thousands to; the one’s still alive after the purge, thousands pouring from the sky like tears in the fabric of all things. Light and fire doused with soil and blood.

He’s wounded his home, irrevocably.

Broken it.

I can’t possibly fix it…

It’s not broken, Dean…

I’m not wrong. I’m going to fix my home…

Maybe to fix it…

I fixed you, Castiel…

Sam’s fishing from drawers in the infirmary, and weaving wearily back down to the room when he bumps into the shadow of his brother.

Fresh from sulking and surrounded by the scent of something bitter on his breath, Dean leans against a wall, limbs crossed but still rigid, which means he didn’t get into the sauce all that much.

Sam raises his eyebrows in greeting, and surprise.

“He sticking around?” It’s not much of a question, more like the prologue to an argument Dean wants to have out with anyone who’ll listen.

“Doesn’t look like he can go anywhere just now, Dean…” Sam doesn’t want this particular speed bump, but he falls into step anyway. If he hasn’t felt so damn tired, he might side-step the dance altogether.

“Hasn’t stopped him before,” it falls on both of them like a sour note. Dean’s look is violent and tired, and Sam knows he is far from reining it in to put himself down for the night.

And there it is, clutched in his brother’s hand like a safety blanket. A bottle of the old stuff, because the Men of Letters had to have a room for everything. Dean uncaps one-handed, leaving the top loose enough for one spin, and takes a drag.

“Dean…”

Sam means to tag on something about not now or stop or any other words that might delay the build up he can taste in the air, like lightning marking its path along the empty map between them before it snaps and burns.

“Let’s say, he’s here for the night…” Dean shrugs, with that awkward weight of someone on tethers, holding back from attack simply because he has no opponent to face, “afterwards, who knows…”

“Give him some time, Dean,” Sam’s trying out his diplomatic muscles, standing on his last legs with a first aid kit in hand, “and then we’ll figure out what he wants.”

“He wants to leave, Sam—I finally got the freaking memo,” Dean scabs over the hurt like it’s trivial, like it doesn’t still cut deep in places that never see the light of day. ”All that waiting and worrying why he didn’t show his face—I finally got it.”

And the self-recrimination for missing the obvious for as long as he has, is etched in every line of Dean’s face, in every prayer unanswered, in every minute of disappointment that has aged him bitter.

“And you know what, I was ok with that,” looking back on that bar stool conversation where they gave what amounted to goodbye, Dean remembers making peace with never being at peace again; sitting next to what had once been a friend, and listening to the things he’d planned to go through with, would wake him with terror every night afterward just like losing Sam to the cage did. “I accepted it, Sam. And now he’s back, and the choices he’s made are still there. And it wasn’t us.”

Sam looks at him like he would apologize for everything. Fraying at the seams (probably at a molecular level) still not recovered to bear everyone’s weight, Sam would take the brunt of it all. It’s not Sam’s job to feel like he’s failed him, Dean hadn’t known it ever was.

Knowing never does a damn, if it doesn’t amount to fixing—that’s a Bobby-ism if Dean’s ever heard one.

Dean caps the bottle in his hand, as easily as he uncapped it. He doesn’t miss the relief, the little bit of weight off his brother’s shoulders at that. He shortens the distance between them with a couple of steps, holding the bottle out like a peace offering.

“Trade?” Dean arches his brow at the sewing kit sagging in Sam’s hand.

“What—oh,” Sam catches on quick despite the way he frowns sluggishly in reply, “you sure?” The skepticism is for the whiskey he knows is in Dean’s system.

And fair enough, but Dean has stitched on worse than a few shots of the good stuff. He hasn’t had enough to make a dent in the stone in the pit of his stomach. Truth is, he isn’t all that up to facing Cas, but it’s for Sam’s benefit and the benefit of not having to fix what’s going to be a mess later.

Preemptive, he thinks, that’s a resolution for the next apocalypse, since they don’t do New Years by half measures.

He’s about to tell his brother to get some shut eye, when they hear it. The sound of something breaking to pieces in the room they’ve left Cas in. They don’t share looks of alarm, they use the time to sprint down a few doors, and what they see at the end of it, that’s what makes them pause.

Cas swims in broken glass, fragments still tinkling in the half-light, still unsettled. In the broken skin of his right hand he holds a lightning bolt of a shard. He looks at it, as if just tuned into its existence, captivated by its reflective glare, the point it makes.

The sleeve of his right arm soaks through and drizzles red veined around his manic outline. Cas doesn’t notice, not that nor them.

“Cas…” Dean breaks his tongue on that name, he’s worn the skin by miles and miles on that name.

Cas stumbles against the bureau, feet catching on the sharp edged floor cutting them deeper. He realizes their company for the first time, eyes wide and sharper than the thing he holds in his hand.

“Dean…” his voice dissolves, too paper thin to combat particles of air, as he thrusts it from his throat.

Unknowingly, he takes a step their way.

“Whoa—easy, Cas…” Sam tosses the med kit on the bed, and uses the movement to cover the steps he makes subtly towards the bureau. ”There’s glass…see. All around. You’ve gotta be careful, man…”

“I know…” Cas tilts his hand, reversing the center of gravity around the lines and beads of blood sliding in his palm, and the piece of broken mirror he holds. ”I put it there.” And then he lifts the pointed end to the hollow of his throat.

“Hey—hey,” panic brings Dean forward and stops him short. ”Put that down, man…” he raises his hands placatingly. ”You don’t need to do that.”

“I was supposed to fix it…” Cas’ hands are shaking bad, and all that movement does is break the fine layer of skin along his neck. It draws a dark bead that slips and trails down the indent of his bare sternum to his navel, a red line striking against the white of shocked skin. ”Maybe there might be time…there’s still a chance to reason with him…”

“Reason with who—What the hell are you talking about?” Dean’s mouth dries of purpose. Fear grips him back to white hospital scrubs and a broken thing spewing madness, unable to take responsibility.

“He told me to find him in Heaven when I die…” The more Cas speaks, Dean can see the mission he’s set before himself; how he’s going to follow through no matter the consequences, like he always does. ”…to tell him my story.”

“He’s talking about Metatron.” Sam takes his eyes off Cas to communicate with his brother.

“He just needs someone t-to understand…” He digs the tip of the spear of mirror deeper, almost unconsciously.

“Stop, Cas—just stop,” Dean can see the fragile line between them fraying apart. He swallows fury and terror at the thought of losing it completely. ”We’ll think of something else.”

“I’ll get him to reverse the spell…” Cas is droning, his body a broken figure propped up by wooden furniture. “He’s like me, Dean. He thinks he’s done the right thing…” The blue of his irises seethe as he opens them impossibly wide. They burn with wounded earnestness; the final throes turned to poison.

“Cas, you gotta to stop and think, dammit.” The pinch at the end of the shard skins no further as Cas diverts unfathomable attention his way. Dean tries to dam up the chasm with desperate orders. He hears them echo off uselessly in the black pupils that stare and consume his words without reaction. ”Look, I get it—no one gets it better than me—I know that you want to help, that’s all you’ve ever wanted. I get wanting to fix it, man—I do. I know you owe a lot to a lot of people. But haven’t we learned from our mistakes?”

Those tremulous eyes shutter close with great exhaustion as they hide from Dean and Sam.

“I have to try…” he repeats the same song they have in the past; maybe they’ve taught it to him, along with every bad decision that came in the aftermath. 

Because that’s what you do. You try.

“And look where it’s got you, you stupid sonovabitch?!” Dean’s default is the anger that’s been riding under skin for the past few hours, pumped on nothing but the rotted piece of his heart sick with betrayal after betrayal. All he knows, right now…all that matters is the cut needling deeper and deeper. And Dean keeps losing the words to dig it out. ”You couldn’t fix things when you were an angel—you couldn’t fix things when you were hopped up on God-juice. You were trying to do good, but where’s the good here, Cas? You broke Heaven…it’s raining angels.”

"Dean…" Sam’s hand draws weak on his arm, a hiss of breath trying to douse a fire that’s ignited on years worth of fuel. His fingers dance on Dean’s skin trying to find the right combination to lock it all back, keep it from going further. But not even Sam can stop him now.

"What else are you going to fuck up before you finally get it?! If you go up against Metatron, that’s if he let’s you in—if you’re even allowed in—what do you think is going to come out of this but a suicide run, Cas?! You’re not an angel anymore, dammnit—you’re just a man!”

It sinks in.

The word strikes like lightning; spiderwebbing through blue-veined currents until it hits dead-center in Cas’ brain. Dean can see it on impact; projected in the way his skin shivers, his torso painted in blood, his face punch-drunk and falling.

A man.

Dean has looked but only through the eye of a storm. The dust of his rage is settling down, dying enough to let clarity through and gaze at the thing that’s been in his war path this whole time.

A man.

A body at the mercy of the Earth, thin-limbed and wasting before Dean’s eyes, stands a man; a poor, broken sonovabitch worse off than even him or his stupid brother. At least, Dean has always had Sam.

Cas has lost everything. 

Here. It sinks in.

"Cas…I’m…" Dean is both the bullet and the wound. He winces at bloody fingers sawing themselves open as Cas starts losing grip of the mirror in his hand. Cas tightens his mouth, breaks his lips against his teeth. The white of his eyes net red with broken vessels, and his head swivels on a fracturing axis spouting no, no.

Cas tries to contain it. Impossible terror driving his body into a slow a curl, he refuses to make a sound, doesn’t let anything spill out, not even air. Before their faces, he’s imploding and still he tries to barricade with stoicism and finds himself failing. But with red pressure pulsing at his insides, he contains…

Until he can’t.

He screams.

He screams and shatters the remaining reflection of himself with a raw fist. He screams unrelenting errors and cuts their ears with a voice that embraces compunction and fault. He can’t sustain the grief of thousands, so he ruptures.

The fall of angels—that’s what he cries. His eyes are the spillways of a decimated world; eons of collective history and agony filtered through human tears.

There aren’t words or concepts divined by mankind for what they bare witness. Sam and Dean, remarkable in their own right for the universe shed before them Earth, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, they stir with new terrible knowledge.

In the aftermath, they find a man crouched on the floor, hands and fingers digging madly into the corners of his face because he can’t handle what his mind quakes and thunders.

Dean finds his movement now. His ability to feel the floor beneath him, to sense his brother at his periphery. He goes to his knees, aware of himself in a sudden rush, of the stretch of his calve muscles as they bear him to the floor, of his knees bumping against the thighs of another, of his arms—which run over the tense line of a shoulder and slip into the space under lifted elbows and fit themselves securely. A hand finds itself over the stuttered landscape of exposed ribs, another cradled into a mess of sweat and hair. There’s a warm mouth gasping at the side of his neck. There’s blood at his chest, blood that unites them now.

Dean can see himself in a fractured perimeter of mirrored angles. He can find his fear readily enough, his ever waning ability to endure strain. He’s clutched to someone…not just someone. A friend? A mistake? A man? A piece of himself he’d thought discarded, and though worn down and makeshift, slots in place against his heart.

Dean thinks to keep it there, to make it stay.

He feels more than sees his little brother coming up behind them. His little brother, who’s probably brushing his hair away from his face nervously. He can hear him with his large movements, swallowing on adrenaline and spent of strength in every way imaginable. Still, Sam fists his shoulder with a large hand and connects them fiercely, painfully.

It’s here that Dean can say the words that have just traveled into his brain.

"We’ve got you…" he tells Cas and squeezes his friend that much harder to prove it. 

"We’ve got you."


	5. The brink

_It’s here that Dean can say the words that have just traveled into his brain._ _“We’ve got you…” he tells Cas and squeezes his friend that much harder to prove it._ _ “We’ve got you.” _

The world is bent, refracted—worse, a mirror that catches all his violent evolution and reflects it back.

There’s a man in the place of an angel. He bleeds out red as any other, weeping open-skinned and bright. He stains his final place on earth, beside brothers of his kind.

“Cas…” all passivity encases him, but the arms that surround it squeeze him in gentle reminder that he is a nascent thing. Newly mortal, his first action paints a picture in the raw. In red, he says Castiel the angel is dead.

The failure is, the same cannot be said of Cas the human.

_You don’t even die right…_

It’s his curse.

Apparently, it has followed him into humanity. Perhaps, the rules will be different this time. He won’t come back worse off, because what can the new low be? What’s the aftermath of nothing?

“Cas—Don’t, man…. _don’t…”_

It’s a large hand, enclosing his own softly. His blood stains through the membrane of both. He loosens the chocking grip of his pulse, throbbing in the center of his fist. But finds he can’t unbend his hand alone.

The other—a formation of bone, muscle, and sinew—helps it along. Careful fingers uncurl and expose the red flayed along his palms, the tissue drawn back into a morbid gap, exposing the inside of his knuckles, and the glass still dug into his nail-beds; hands empty, save for the well of blood.

Thoughts are swimming too fast to catch and hold. They’ll slip from him anyway, blood slicked as his hands are, and numb.

“That’s it,” the hand coaxes, “just let it go.”

_Sam_. He hovers, kind-faced but worn.

In his search for Father, Cas remembers the face of a statue in an abandoned temple along the Equator. If it still stands, it has a face like Sam’s, a constant gaze unconcerned while it collapses underfoot of exposure and encroaching time.

Cas has forgotten the civilization it belonged to.

“Cas…?” Sam crumbles further at the edges, shedding his skin on behalf of others.

Cas reaches, red-handed, out for the cracks. Sam seems pulled in by his efforts and leans forward enough for Cas to slide two fingers gently along his forehead. Confusion blooms under his touch in the raise of hairline, under skin as Cas strains.

_Heal…_ he plants the thought into the hand outspread to Sam. He thinks it hard enough to mend stone. He strains and imagines his circumference pulling the shards of mirror back together, the blood sliding back into his veins, the flash of heat as his grace seals all wounds away, including the cold dead center he’s felt since waking.

Cas lets go, and leaves a smear along Sam’s face; leaves it looking torn down.

_I’ve made it worse…Father, I’ve made it so much worse…_

“What was that, Cas?” Dean rumbles forgotten against him. His voice injects into Cas’ ear canals, into the cold catacomb of his chest.

He stirs, a string plucked harsh, thrumming to the universe in discord. His body stutters; a broken wavelength, unfinished on the assembly line.

What did she say…a crack in his chassis.

Bodies already in a tangle, a mess of limbs and history, Cas slumps further into Sam’s brother and pulses.

From his crouch on the floor at Dean’s back, Sam can’t see his brother’s expressions, just the muscles of his shoulders gathering to hold them both upright. Cas’ legs slant uselessly between Dean’s knees, the rest of his body tremors.

Sam can feel the shakes second hand, fingers spread along his brother’s lower back. Dean is a filter for the body he shields beneath him. But they can’t stay this way forever.

“Sam…did he pass out?” Dean tries to see for himself, but the angle retracts his neck. He curses under breath.

Sam doesn’t know.

Cas’ eyes flutter between the dark turquoise of his irises and the off-white slithers of his scleras. His facial muscles convulse against Dean’s shoulder. The tear tracks on his skin dry chalk white.

“ _Cas…_ _"_ Sam’s blood-stained fingers search for the pulse against a clammy throat. He feels the quick tap of it underhand, and passes his thumb under the cheek of his friend’s left eye, pressing down to widen his gaze. His eyes dart every-which way, but at Sam, there’s no reaction.

"He’s having some kinda seizure…" Sam chooses to fasten both hands, cupping his head upright. At his left, the corner of Cas mouth twitches so Sam keeps him from reflexively biting his brother’s neck.

By the time his body settles down, Cas is panting hard, completely unconscious.

"Passed out now," Sam arranges his friend, the weight of his dark head settled back on Dean’s shoulder. Sam’s fingers are damp, but he lingers in the curve along Cas’ jawline and the back of his neck where his hair curls in a cold sweat. "He’s pushing himself too much. He’ll kill himself like this…"

"Think that was the point," Dean’s bite is something cornered. His harsher expressions lie in a sheen of panicked sweat. The shoulder unoccupied by the tears and spit of his best friend, he rubs his face against. His brother’s shoulder blades rise stiffly, objects of steel, but only surface-wise, their movements betrayed by a punctured breath of apprehension that folds him almost in half against Cas’ unconscious form.

Something in Sam plummets down, even after what he’s witnessed so far.

Dean grunts and shifts on his ankles, crackling joints or glass, “Help me get him up…"

Sam’s legs have gone static from his position, but he acknowledges the command by rising to his feet wearily. Thank—whoever—for the fact that Sam kept his shoes on. Each step crunches down hard. Because gravity isn’t Sam’s friend right now, he worries over a wayward shard stabbing through a rubber sole as he circles over the top of Dean and Cas’ heads. He finds his station behind his friend’s body, applying his hands dutifully.

Half-way to kneeling, he keels under a wave of prolonged exhaustion and feels himself threatened to go overboard. Reflexes scraping by, he catches himself on a sharp-edged floor and plucks his thumb back in surprise. The red at the end of it wells as he dislodges the wedge of mirror he finds there. He throws it back to sea of pieces they’ve surrounded themselves in. He sucks his thumb, tasting metal.  He's aware, the pain has gotten him back to ground.

It usually does.

“ _Sam_ …"

His brother can’t have missed that move, but Dean’s too busy holding Cas to launch himself protectively over Sam—like he’s been doing for months, for a lifetime, really. Sam settles for hearing the line Dean’s voice throws his way, oddly annoyed.

"I can do this, Dean," facing his brother’s concern over the back of Cas’ slumped head, it emerges aggravated.

Dean’s mouth clenches, physically biting back words Sam already knows by heart. His brothers arms are wrapped around their unresponsive friend, guarding. His fists are dug in painfully into the flannel shirt Cas wears, bruises guaranteed by morning. His eyes wrap around Sam much the same, but Dean drops his fierce gaze—a momentary truce—as Sam settles his hands in the space between Dean’s forearms and Cas’ armpits.

They work in the quiet way they always have, all hands and shifting weight, leaving Sam balancing Cas upright above the broken ground.

For his part, Dean straightens his back and slides his hands parallel down Cas’ thighs and gathers the weight of his lower body at the knees, getting his friend’s abused feet hovering.

With a quiet signal, they rise carefully together, Cas’ resembles a hammock swinging from their hands. They take careful steps in almost tandem, with mirror pieces skidding from under them. They lose traction for seconds, but neither Winchester falls.

Cas’ shirt has slid open, the red bloodline drawn over his sternum has split him down the center. Sam subconsciously uses it as a guide to keep the slope of his torso even between them. The back of his head lolls against Sam’s chest, his heart pounds into it desperately.

Dean marches backward into the hall with Cas’ lower body, and Sam catches up to him, with Cas’ upper body, an unconscious tether they guide carefully along the stretch of corridor. Sam knows they’re headed to the infirmary, so his eye level stays on the even pace of his step, on Cas’ slack features drawn upside down; both gauges for his movements.

inches of maneuvering around corners and the double door that Dean shifts open with his spine, they finally dump him on the closest bed. And while Sam is as considerate as can be, the speed with which his trembling arms arrange Cas onto the pillows isn’t negligible.

"Sam," Dean’s voice showers overhead, after his quick retreat to the second bed over. He sits over his knees trying to draw an easy breath, but it’s coming hard. A hand stamps over his shoulder, his brother the most annoying anchor.

"I’m fine," it falls weakly, they both know it. Sam might give a sardonic smirk because why is he even trying.

His brother digs his fingers and squeezes, not unkindly, but reassuringly _there_. It’s enough to rouse him. He opens his eyes to Dean’s back, following his movements to the other bed.

They’ve left their friend comfortable enough, but Dean fixes the bend of Cas’ legs and props his bloody feet over a pillow. With all the staring they’ve done collectively as they kept bedside vigil together, Sam can’t get used to seeing Cas like this.

"Maybe we should get him to a hospital," as far a suggestions goes, it should’ve been the first a night ago. Sam run his hands over his rough edges, over guilt and the self-delusion that maybe Cas wasn’t entirely human, that the blood at his feet and the emptiness of his eyes hadn’t set in.

Sam will admit now that they’d both watched him carefully, waiting for him to brush off the aftermath, as he’d been able to brush off death and madness. But there’s dried blood flaking on Sam’s fingers, evidence to the contrary, and his stomach objects. A towel is tossed into his lap, warm and wet. He wipes his hands gratefully.

"They’re gonna ask questions, Sammy," there’s another towel in Dean’s hand, wet from the sink off in the corner. He’s placing gentle strokes against Cas’ collar. “they’re gonna take one look at him, they’ll lock him down and they’re not gonna get _why_."

“ _Dean_ …"

“ _Sam—_ let me see what I’m dealing with here," Dean doesn’t look up from his work, his pace methodical even if the energy about him is off. The way he’s trying to keep his emotional distance from what he’s doing, makes it a deeper cut for Dean. "If it’s more than I can handle, we’ll get him patched up at a hospital and gun out. But for now…" He huffs a breath, his hand a fist around the damp towel. Squeezed droplets fall indiscriminately down Cas’ torso, mixing with the dry line of blood, and slide from his sternum in pink traces.

Sam’s never watched his brother from this perspective before. The lack of physical space with which he delivers his care. Sam has been the sole occupant of this hemisphere of Dean, and knowing it and seeing it have suddenly become two disparate things.

He holds watch quietly. His brother’s hands dip and cover the ground of his friend’s body, unselfconsciously. His grip is gentle as he cups Cas’ face and tilts it upwards. The nick along his neck is rubbed down carefully.

"There. Just a flesh wound," the words _try_ so hard to be buoyant and casual, Sam sees the relief puncture the bubble of worry in the atmosphere between them.

Still, there’s a pause of trepidation as Dean goes to Cas’ hands. It’s got to be delicate work, no good doing it sloppy. Hands are tricky, but they’re not exactly unpracticed.

"I’ll get the—" Sam’s already half-way to rising for the tweezers and magnifying glass, and the overhead lamp they haven’t turned on (because the lights in the wall sconces aren’t enough). They’re going to need light for this job, lots of it.

"—No, you’re getting your ass to bed, Sam," Dean barks, but it’s more quiet than rough, easily absorbed by the old brick that the bunker is erected from.

"Fine," he knows he’s channeling his thirteen-year-old self, mouthing off to his big brother. Too tired to do anything else, Sam practically strives for petulance. He sits back down on the bed next to Cas’, "I’ll stick with this one." There are eight beds in the stretch of room that runs lengthwise; four beds along one wall, four on the other, all facing the center isle—six of which are empty.

“ _Sam…_ " Dean picks his head up to launch a glare.

"I’m not leaving you…" he’s picking from the bottom of his reserves. His thigh muscles already twitch as he starts arranging himself over the covers "…either of you."

Something in Sam's face must give it all away; how he’s muscled through the fog of ailment that’s persisted since his friend’s home upended itself, but it’s starting up again now; that strange inverted feeling that left him hypersensitive yet hollow. He’d resonated with the tablet, whatever that meant, and hasn’t felt settled in his own skin since.

Dean’s perpetual silence is a strike of victory for Sam. One he ignores as he settles further into a dusty, threadbare mattress abandoned since the late 50’s.

Instead, he watches Cas. And once he’s done with trying to outlast Sam in stubbornness, so does Dean. Peripherally, he tracks the improvements Dean makes to Cas’ hands. He’s brought a metal bowl filled with water. He settles it on one of the medical trays scattered down the aisle, finds a stool to sit on and do his work.

Dean dips the towel, the wet weight of it held carefully. He draws out Cas right arm from his side and rings the towel free of water over his injured hand. He repeats, washing the blood until the shards stand out.

His brother winces, bottom lip curling into his teeth as he hisses with discomfort. Cas can’t hear it, can’t feel the arrangement of his forearm draped over Dean’s knee, can’t feel the first sharp pinch as the glass is retrieved slowly. When the blood returns again, the water is there to cleanse the wound.

Freed pieces fall into the tray with a metallic _ping._ Another follows after, then another, like notes ringing in the circle of light from the single lamp above them; a spotlight. Sam drifts in the somber song they make as Dean digs into open skin, chasing after the shattered mirror.

Cas himself is a bare reflection of all he was; brow quivering with every dislodged fragment. He’s feeling it now, throat jumping unconsciously; the shadow of his chin undulating with cold sweat.

Sam’s hand is palm-down, fingers fanned between the cooled sheets near the warm breathe of his mouth. He drifts further and further from the halo of light that surrounds his brothers. One taking care of the other, as it has always been. As it will always be. This thought is the only comfort in his empty grasp, so he allows himself to drift.

_"What were you thinking, man?"_ Dean’s voice hovers at a whisper.

_ping. ping._ The song continues in place of better words. Of answers.

_"Why don’t you ever listen, huh?"_ Sam doesn’t mean to catch the edge of Dean’s one-sided conversation. His eyes are sealed firm, but the half-state where his mind is more awake than his body, means he can’t help himself.

The song he listens to goes harsh, with a piercing _ping_ that swivels in the space of air, echoing along the circumference of light before it plummets into dead silence.

_"Why didn’t you…"_ the struggle of heaving emotion passing through the window of Dean’s mouth, which is suddenly too small an exit. _"Why couldn’t you trust me, Cas?"_ He’s almost broken with the thought, but prods the wound anyway, digging after another shattered fragment.

_"Couldn’t trust me with the angel tablet--You afraid I was gonna use it against you?"_

There’s an exhalation that takes a century to pass, dry wind that Sam imagines disturbing the dust of a cracked, ancient earth.

_"…had t-to…protect…"_ it sieves tiredly through the seams of a scorched mouthpiece, a voice like charcoal.

_"—Protect it from me. I know,"_ a dejected admission that costs Dean any seeds of forgiveness. His voice is devoid of life, hardly a jump of surprise despite what he thought was an unconscious body under his fingers.

"… _no,"_ with the burn of the word running through his ruined throat, Cas seems more made of fact "… _pr-protect…you…"_

_"Protect me?"_ the tweezers clack on the wheeled tray, the surprise of his movements strong enough to send it squeaking away a few inches. " _But you said…"_

_"You n-never understand, Dean…"_ Cas sighs, a gentle wisp of his former exasperations. _“You f-followed me…in Purgatory. I t-tried to stay behind. Should have…s-stayed behind…"_

"Don’t _say_ that, man, _"_ the declaration veers off from the hush of vowels and consonants Dean has tried to cage his emotions with. " _Don’t ever think that—Cas. Staying behind was not an option. What good would that have done, huh? Being trapped back there? I thought I let you go…I couldn’t--I couldn’t…"_

Dean doesn’t say what he couldn’t do. The world mutes itself on the idea of it anyway, unspeakable as far as Dean’s universe is concerned. But Sam has witnessed the aftermath of Dean’s emergence from Purgatory; the shadow that followed him when it seemed Cas hadn’t made it.

_"…how can you s-speak of good…?"_ there are sparks imbedded in the thread of words Cas ignites in the half-light, giving him sordid strength. "… _you said it_ _yourself. There is no good here, Dean. I-I destroyed everything…I should be dead, many times over."_

_"Don’t say that, Cas."_

_"After everything I’ve done…I deserve to…"_

“ _Don’t say it,_ dammit. _..!"_

_"Kill me, Dean."_ It scrapes the bottom-most part of his being, an unlit plea or final prayer.

Dean says nothing.

_"So many lives…"_ Cas swallows and the knives that must go down his throat produce the sounds. " _I’ve killed...there's so many…"_ it dies off, going small and fine, "... _So much I've destroyed_ _. You were right, Dean. You are always right. I should have listened. I wish I had listened.  Please, I am begging...kill--"_

It breaks off, a cymbal fallen to the floor, swiveling dissonance.  Dean throws the tray with all its bloody instruments, his chair follows soon after.

The silence has teeth, sharp skin-breaking.  It has teeth and fear and blood crawling up the walls in the dark behind Sam's eyes.  It makes the man quiver in place, makes him want to hold a lifeline out to his brother and his friend left in that gaping maw of silence.  He does the next best thing, incrementally, unnoticed, he starts to open his eyes.

Dean is a sight for fury.  His figure cuts against the light, arms slanted and gripping along his thighs, with face pointed in Cas' direction like a bird of prey.

Fear makes Sam's eyes mere slits.  He can't let them know, not in the moment that slips into infinite, a terrible crescendo trapping them all in suspense.

From his height, Dean stares down the rumpled man bleeding on old sheets, but Cas' eyes don't follow him.  

Cas stares at the ceiling, head propped on a pillow; a man lying supine, he flinches hard under Dean's gaze.  A man prone to failure and hurt.  A broken man that must be stitched up from nothing.

And Dean can't bear the sight of him.

  Dean does what he does best with these kinds of burdens.  Sam sees the way the face of his brother retreats itself to anger.

He leaves.  He takes his half of the hurt shared between them that neither can endure.  In his wake, the timpani echo of his steps might as well be the locks of a door.

Cas heaves out a breath, all his infrastructure caving in with its release.  It must hiss out the cracks of broken ribs, of insides pounded to mulch.  His shoulders rattle, skeletal-like under his shirt and he sinks further into that threadbare mattress as if it could catch his gravity, his plummet.  

Head ducked down to chin, Sam can't see his face.  Instead, he sees the shake of torn hands inching their way across trembling air to rest only wrists against his temples.  Something catches in the light, a prickle movement slipping from corners of Cas' face.

Sam catches on quick.  He shifts, cheek wrinkles complaining as he rushes up from the pillow.  He aches in ways that are epic.  His pains, both without and within are histories that continue to be written.

Still, his story intersects with this desolate being.  He hasn't stopped vibrating since Sam and Dean put him in the infirmary for safe-keeping.  Sam can see his shakes.  

Above his hairline, Cas' fingers twitch, aborted movements that want to wipe the evidence of this new human frailty away, but the pain undoubtedly tells him, he's still in need of stitches.

Because of his distraction, when Sam's hand lands gently on Cas' shoulder, the man startles badly.

Cas jerks up, eyes red-rimmed and going wide.  The tears are obvious now, cresting over bruised sockets, directly under light.  He's a mess, but his movements, though slow, are defensive.  They still possess a soldier's instinct.  Sam increases his grip on a tense bicep.

"It's ok," Sam throws his other hand in for good measure, squeezing gently as he restricts the movement of his arms in case Cas decides to throw a punch, "Cas, it's just me."

"Of course," he coughs, face turning away from Sam, having a brush with embarrassment, "I should've..."

He doesn't say that he should've known, all-aware all-encompasing as the senses of something as big as a sky-rise building should've been; his eagle-view of the Earth shot down, his purview now a broken wingspan.  He doesn't need to say it.

His broken hands, the blood speaks freely down the length of his arms, now that gravity upends them.

"It's fine, Cas."  Sam reassures without thought for tomorrow, or the days that might come after.  It's a blanket statement he cloaks the man before him with indiscriminately.  "It's fine."

It will be.  It  _has_ to be.

Muscles creaking over a metal-spring bed, Cas loses strength.  Sam catches his arms as they start to fall, feeling the exhaustion climbing through the body he holds.  

Cas negates everything with a shake of his head, unknowingly dislodging more tears.  A bitter curve to his mouth, he opens his eyes and turns his incredulous gaze to Sam.

Sam can read the look easily enough. _Don't say stupid things, Sam_.

Sam eases his hands at his sides, palms-up.  The shaking is worrying, as the seizure had been.

"Cas, you gotta try to relax," Sam hasn't let go of those forearms, sliding up and down to deliver warmth, "don't--don't _punish_ yourself."

"I-I...thought I'd emptied it out, Sam," he speaks blearily as Sam uprights the chair and takes his station.

"Emptied what?"  Sam leans down to grab the rolling tray and fix the instruments.  They need to be sterilized again, probably better to grab a new set.

A mangled hand latches over his and drags it haltingly.  Under Sam's palm go the grooving teeth of ribs, skin catching on sticky skin.  His fingers crest over the solid plaque of sternum before Cas lets them rest over his sluggish beating heart.

"This," Cas indicates, eyes glinting against direct overhead light.  "It's...I-I don't understand...It's been a burden...so full of-of..."

His fingers clench against Sam's, unconsciously.  He stares upward, to the ceiling, to the brightest spot over their heads, hoping for clarity, for explanations.  Sam gains humility over his friend's struggle.  Under his hand is something older than matter, than all the living cells combined under the stars and it looks for guidance over the human heart. 

"I t-tried to empty it all out..." Cas releases his hold, and Sam can see how he tried, with the trickle of blood still browning his fingers, "but I c-can't make it stop, Sam," his low baritone barely makes it through, the broken threshold of grief that stops it short.  Here, his eyes find Sam, at a complete loss, pleading for release, open to any form it might take no matter how destructive. 

"How do I m-make it stop?"


	6. Breathing Space

_Here, his eyes find Sam, at a complete loss, pleading for release, open to any form it might take no matter how destructive._

_"How do I m-make it stop?"_

Breathing space.

It exists outside the smell of blood, the hiss and skid of broken pieces trying to amass into something that they used to be. Something that had been them.

Dean has room enough in the bunker, along its cement-wall shooting range, its yard lines of bookshelves, all enough to house them all for several lifetimes.

He finds space enough hard to breathe in.

The hallway.

It may be breathing space. Unfortunately, it’s also thinking space. Dean mutters around a frustrated hand as he leans into the wood-panel of the wall several doors from his own room.

He leans over hard, skin imprinting as he tries to stagger out his weight into the carpet and wall, as if he could shirk all that weight off his bones and give it to the building he calls home.

Isn’t that why he’s settled, for once?

Too tired to take up the weight of their collected journeys.

On his fingers, is the aftertaste of blood

In his periphery, are the shards that Cas has let into his skin. They tinkle in the hallway, all demure sounds muffled by the shallow light of living underground.

Wait.

It’s not his imagination. He hears the broken clatter pressed up against the walls like a playful echo. He follows the scattered noise, tripping in the hallway like morse code. He finds the room of their origin, and looks in with surprise.

Kevin squats alone, dustpan and brush in hand picking up the pieces. He pauses on a stroke, sound fragmenting when he notices Dean at the doorway.

"Hey," the prophet of the lord, gives a wild shrug in his pajamas.

With Cas and the mess he’d become, Kevin is registering in Dean’s psyche like a figment. He’ll admit to having forgotten the kid.

"Kevin…" Dean sighs, a little puff of guilt that circumvents the small, unlivable room, "…I can—you don’t have to—"

"It’s ok, Dean," Kevin understands his slanted arguments from a yard away, still crouched, making the mess smaller as he goes back to work. "Can’t really sleep with all that noise—might as well help you guys out."

Resistance is the epicenter of Dean Winchester’s being. He knows it for a reflex as it curls objections on his tongue. He’s going to try embracing help. He smiles at Kevin. Exhaustion makes it a small, innocuous gesture in the murkiness of the room.

Kevin has become a magnifying glass in the time since they’ve met him; every misery of his life enhanced, and this thing he shares with Dean, stands stark in the silence.

"Cleaned the floor of the map room, too," God’s only prophet goes back to picking up the pieces of their life, "I’m becoming an expert at removing bloodstains" he shrugs in his light gray shirt, voice light and easy. "You might want to check out the fridge in the infirmary. Don’t know his blood type—but there’s enough variety from that vamp bait you guys stocked up on last time."

Kevin Tran, advanced placement, even in this wearing tearing life he’s embraced with both fists full.

Dean walks gently to clasp his shoulder fiercely. He walks out just as quietly as he’d entered. He finds himself in a single-minded line, heading for his own room. His duffel lies steady in his closet. He slides the flaps open, and digs.

Jimmy Novak had stepped out from his home dressed as God’s only soldier; his pressed Sunday suit, his neat overcoat. He had carried his faith, his wedding ring, and his wallet.

A few years back, Cas had handed him a sealed yellow envelope. A single name is scrawled on in manic script on the front. _Claire_ _._ No address. No letter. Just a wallet and a ring.  Dean has carried them in his duffel like reliquary, along with his half-hearted lookouts for what’s left of the Novak family.

This he pulls out without caution, and tears through. The ring tumbles out, heavier metallic gravity pulling it down unnoticed. The wallet is pinched, takes ripping the envelope to get it out. Dean flips it open.

Through a transparent slit on the inside, there’s a picture of a man, an easy face Dean can’t say he recognizes. With shaking fingers, Dean slides Jimmy Novak’s drivers license free. His address. His age, hair and eye color, his weight, and most importantly, his blood type viewable.

AB positive. Jimmy Novak, universal recipient.

Life’s little ironies.

***

Sam notices the way his eyes have fallen; glinting sideways and fluttering to dislodge that glassy quality that overcomes them.

Above all, Cas is a soldier. Like any good soldier, he doesn’t surrender easily. Not to humanity. Not to failure or defeat. He rises against his own body, shaking and stirring under Sam’s gaze even when all Sam wants for him is a truce.

Sam abides by the wishes of others. He’s not too transparent about it, talking to Cas to keep his friend’s mind present while he thinks about stitching his index finger. Sam’s worried about the way his mouth slurs, breathless punctuations breaking over his cracking lips. Sam’s worried enough to keep him awake.

"What’s with the shakes, Cas?"

Irrigating the wounds with a syringe has helped Sam look at the lacerations on the right hand. The tendons are definitely cut along the inside of his thumb, between several fingers, and palm, definite muscle tissue and perhaps some nerve damage.

The infirmary has been updated and restocked since they’ve officially moved in. The bactine has come in handy for the pain, or Cas is going too out of it to care anymore.

Sam feels confident enough to start stitching. A lifetime of practice on his father and brother makes him an amateur surgeon, but Sam has fine-tuned his skill since then.

Sam’s ex-girlfriend had been a trained veterinarian with a well-stocked hospital at her disposal, and time on her hands.

Sam has always felt the residue of cutthroat practicality under skin since the return of his soul. Not all of his time off had been picnics and sex, contrary to what Dean may believe.

It sinks his gut to know how it’s paying off now.

Cas stares at his question as if it’s a oddity muttered under the glaring light of that overhanging lamp.

"You haven’t really stopped since you got here," Sam elaborates.

"I…I can’t really explain," Cas whispers, throat wrecked from screaming.

"Try," Sam’s ease is a battering ram against self-guarded walls. He’s used these tactics against his stubborn brother, and now he uses it on their ex-angel.

Cas takes lifetimes rolling the answers along his tongue. If the way he drags it across his parched mouth is anything to go by, it’s an agony that doesn’t allow him to swallow his words back down as soon as he starts.

"I-I’m out of alignment," he blinks rapidly, but its not the glare of light that burns his sight, "n-nothing fits…and what does fit, is _overwhelming_.” Cas turns to him suddenly, eyes wide and searching. ”D-does that make sense?”

Sam wishes it didn’t. Whatever half-state the trials left him still vibrating to the Word, rings with complete empathy. He simply nods at Cas as he plucks up a curving needle from a new tray.

"Cas…?" Sam begins this question gently, as careful as his threading. He feels his friend’s attention peak, but doesn’t meet his gaze directly. He doesn’t want this to be an interrogation, overhead spotlight and sharp instruments notwithstanding. "When you left all those weeks ago with the angel tablet, you said you wanted to protect it _from_ us, and now…you’re saying you did it to protect us. I’m just drawing up a blank here, man,” Sam confesses. ”I mean, why leave at all? We’re on the same team here, right? If you wanted to protect us, you know the safest place is the bunker. You know that sticking around would’ve been the smart move.”

"Look at yourself, Sam," it’s the first sense of indignation, of fire lacking for the longest time now flaring to life. "You think I would have left closing Heaven on your shoulders. On Dean..." His tone goes rueful and melancholic as he winces on the first stitch.

"So you lied to us."

"Yes, I l-lied," Cas deadpans, teeth just shy of clenching.

"--Because you thought we’d screw the job," Sam hides the disappointment already forming a frown, chin tucking down with a curtain of hair to shield his battered feelings.

"Because I know you, and I know you’re b-brother. And you both would have fought me over who g-got to martyr themselves first. And because that’s what humans do...to get what they w-want," he stares at the ceiling something at a loss in his gaze, "they lie."

Because what he wanted was to keep them safe, regardless of the steps he took to ensure it.

And Sam can see how desperate that gambit had been.  But it's not the only thing--Sam's gotten better at confession.  He can see the buildup, or breakdown still hovering around them.  As if the past hour hadn't been enough.

"That wasn't the only thing," Sam needles his way in, skin dancing away from his fingers as he pinches the gash close.

"It never is…" Cas sighs.  His eyes close slowly, striking fresh tears against his bloodless face.  They trail thick on his skin, and his chest stutters on a deep breath.  

"I-I left because I couldn't…I couldnt trust myself--not after Naomi…"  He begins again, more determined, so Sam takes pause in acknowledgement.  "You don't know the months she m-made me…" his voice breaks.  "I-I fought her, at the start…b-but I wasn't strong enough to stop…th-the way she made me kill him again…again…"  he gives a strangled laugh, surprising Sam in its borderline hysteria, "p-practice she called it…"

There's something wide and panicked in the light that strikes his eyes as he brings his gaze to Sam.  "D-Don't tell him…please…"

There's no question who he's referring to.  Sam has vague memories of Hell before Cas pulled them out of his head, he can fill in the blanks of what angels can do when they're creative enough.  Sam bites his lips on response, on anger that he didn't know he should've felt for his friend's behalf while he was missing, while he underwent torture.

Cas shakes on the infirmary bed, waiting for Sam's agreement.  Sam nods to him gently, and resumes his ministrations with heavy hands.  He's tying sutures expertly, pausing to syringe when the blood wells.

"I need you to do something for me, Cas," he begins suddenly, no thought to what comes out of his mouth except the knife of something carving words out.

"Yes."

There it is, a soldier waiting his orders.  

It must feel like comfort to Cas, a being who spent millennia just following.  Sam doesn't know if what's about to crawl across his mouth is a smile or grimace.  He doesn't start on the next laceration.  He focuses on Cas, doesn't flinch at the sight he makes with clammy skin and half dried blood.

"Promise me, that when I get this done you won't leave," Sam knows what he's doing, as the tension rises from where he's still clasping his friend by the wrist, "no more slipping out while our heads are turned, no more running…"  if it's possible those blue eyes have widened with his ultimatum.

" _Sam_ …" he looks like wants to run, still shivering with inaction.

"I'm not done," and here he digs, to the mess of fierce protectiveness that isn't a one way street, "you can't do _this_ again.  If I'm just stitching you up so you can…" his eyes are burning, not from lack of sleep, "we don't have anyone left, so we can't afford  _this_ …do you understand, Cas?  Do you understand what I'm asking?"

Cas nods, his throat tense, his eyes the sharpest they've been in hours.

"My brother won't ask you--he'd  _never_ ask you to stay," Sam confesses, "but that's why I am.  You don't know what he looks like when your gone--you didn't see his face after _this…_ " his hands are gentle where they are, cupping the injuries.  "And you know, _I_ can't…I'm not strong right now, Cas. I need your help here cause that's what family does when you're not strong enough on your own.  I need you here, with us-- _with us._ "

Sam's own hands have started trembling now.  He can't see through the haze of tears in his own eyes.  He knows he's bee pretending for so long for Dean's sake and his reserves have been empty for hours.

There's a cool weight on his wrist, a thumb pressed into the pulse point of his right hand.  He blinks and doesn't mind how his face is open and weepy before a pair of eyes that've seen the world itself draw its first breaths.  

But that's not quite right either.  It's the face of a brother that gazes back at him, holding on to Sam as much as Sam holds onto him.  There's something in that, he thinks blearily.  It's not quite happiness, or contentment, but it's no longer loneliness.

They can start with that.

Sam doesn't know and neither does Cas as they continue stitching and healing respectively.  They have an audience to their words.  Dean Winchester leans against the brickwork surrounding the open metal door.  He has a hand wrapped over his mouth bracing the heartbroken sounds he doesn't want to make because with his sort of luck, he'd make them aware that he's heard  _everything._

 _tbc_...


End file.
